


The Fall of Binary Stars

by MemoryDragon



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 15k worth of angst, Angst, But really it is actually a happy ending, Cap-IM kink meme, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, Lots of OCs - Freeform, M/M, Major Character Death (Sort of), Or Zombies, Or in any sort of afterlife, Seriously it's the nature of the prompt, Steve Angst, Steve Feels, Steve Needs a Hug, Temporary Character Death (sort of), They're not quite dead, followed by 5k of tooth rotting sap, it's complicated - Freeform, just go with it, kink meme fill, spoilers in end notes if necessary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1698647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemoryDragon/pseuds/MemoryDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Steve Rogers wanted was to wake up to find he'd lost not seventy years, but 235 years this time.  Just when he was getting his life together, he has to start over again.</p><p>Or does he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fall of Binary Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cameron_McKell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cameron_McKell/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** I do not own the Avengers movie-verse, nor do I make any claim to. Also, I may have stolen a lot of things from Babylon 5, but absolutely no knowledge about B5 is necessary to read this. I just made a heck of a lot of references since I'm kind of half-stealing a plot thread from it.  
>  **Warnings:** Kind of, sort major character death that doesn't quite get better but isn't quite dead either? Yeah, it's complicated (as in huge spoilers), but complicated with a happy ending. Just realize there are some (non-overly gory) descriptions of death in here. There's also some kind of assisted suicide that doesn't take and one case of briefly mentioned actual suicide. Seriously, just go with it. Check the spoilers at the end if you need to, but I don't recommend it.  
>  **Thanks:** Many thanks as always to narwhale_callin, even if I did kill her with one part of the angst, and then again with one part of the fluff. Also thanks to Cameron_McKell for giving me a plot to twist to my own purposes.  
>  **Notes:** Hi. So like, absolutely no one is actually going to read this since it's Steve Rogers surrounded in a sea of OCs, but hey. One can dream, right? 
> 
> This was written for a prompt on the cap-im: Fifty Years of Captain America and Iron Man meme. It does not quite follow the prompt, because I'm worse than a genie with twisting prompts to suit my own purposes. Basically, I read the prompt, then had a Babylon 5 epiphany, and ran with it. Let me repeat, you do not need to know anything about B5 for this. I just stole a plot line because it worked so extremely well. I've linked the prompt at the end, since it is spoiler-y in nature, even if not entirely truthful to where I've taken the fic.
> 
> Also, there are OCs. The nature of the story kind of requires them, since Steve wakes up by his lonesome 235 years in the future. And if anyone is still reading who hasn't been scared off by the letters 'OC' then hopefully you will enjoy them. 
> 
> Finally, if you won't take my word on the fact that it has a happy ending of 5k of unredeemable fluff, you can find complete spoilers in the end notes. I (or rather, my Beta, who emphatically said I should try not to ruin anything) do not recommend this as it completely spoils the story, but it's there if you need it. If possible, I'd suggest getting a friend to read it and tell you if you'd like it.

Steve Rogers felt like he was floating. No, not quite floating. This was more like he lacked a body entirely. Which was odd, because he remembered having a body. A very nice one too, after the serum had done its job. It was still a little hard to believe when he looked into the mirror sometimes, but the serum gave him the look of a movie star, as the USO girls had liked to tell him.

Tony would be very put out if Steve no longer had a body. They'd been taking things slow between them, and Tony had been perfectly willing to wait, even stopping things himself a few times. But Steve wasn't oblivious and he saw the look of hunger that sometimes crossed Tony's face when he thought Steve wasn't looking. Tony _liked_ Steve's body. And Steve knew that Tony wasn't chasing after him just for that, but it was nice that Steve could feel like he was worth looking at now. He knew better than to ever mention that thought to Tony again, because the last time had resulted in a two hour long Power Point of pictures of his pre-serum self and Tony going over exactly how hot and bothered he'd be if he'd met Steve back then.

No one could say Tony wasn't thorough.

There also wasn't much Steve could _do_ without a body. Sure, he was good at strategy, but Steve's greatest strengths in a fight still relied on his body. He'd be kind of useless without one. Even before the serum he'd at least had a body.

He tried to remember what had happened. Had there been a fight? The last thing he remembered was watching a movie with Tony, who had fallen asleep curled up to his shoulder with a bit of chocolate cake stuck in his goatee that Steve had been too charmed to tell the genius about. He could almost feel the impression of Tony's body against him. He wondered if he'd even be able to feel that again, and part of him ached for the feeling to return.

Suddenly, Steve had a body again, weighted and complete. His lungs filled with air slowly, not like they'd been empty and desperate for breath. There were sounds too, the soft sounds of muffled crowds from a nearby window or door. There were also some voices nearby that were pretty faint, but Steve could make them out.

"-to be working. It's hard to tell exactly where the memories will start with that last fiasco, but it should be easy enough to figure out."

"So it will work this time?"

"No doubt, Sir. We've learned a lot from previous tries. He should be waking up now."

Well, no point in pretending any longer. Steve opened his eyes, peering up at the ceiling. It was white and nondescript. He turned his head to the side and was granted a view of several machines. They looked a little like the machines Steve saw whenever he ended up at the hospital, but they were too different. They were more sophisticated in the design, but also more complex than Steve remembered them to be.

Steve jolted up, only to find himself trapped under something that went over his chest. "Easy, Captain Rogers," the second voice said as he felt hands on his shoulders pushing him back down. "You're safe here."

"Then why-" Steve started, looking at the contraption that didn't quite lay on his chest but spanned the bed he was lying on. It had blinking lights, panels, and buttons, none of which looked familiar.

"Just to monitor your vitals and help in case things went wrong and you went into cardiac arrest," the voice said. Steve tore his gaze away from the machinery to look at the man. He was of medium height with a receding hairline and thick glasses. He had a bland smile that set Steve on guard for no reason he could discern. A doctor, from the clothes.

There was also a woman with dark brown hair with a tablet and freckles who helped the doctor move the machine that had restricted his movement off to a table near by. She had a round face and blue eyes hidden under her bangs. She didn't seem as threatening as the first man, but he didn't discount her as a threat yet.

While they were moving the machine, Steve got a better look at the room. The machinery really wasn't anything he recognized. It was obviously a hospital and there was some kind of tube in the back that looked ominous, but he couldn't make out anything else. There were no windows, no markings on the wall that could tell him what was going on. It screamed of wrongness. "Where am I?" he asked, watching the two of them carefully.

"Captain Rogers, you're-" the woman started, excitement in her eyes.

"Dr. McDonnell, please calm yourself," the older man replied.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, not meeting either of their eyes.

"I'd like an answer to my question," Steve growled. He wasn't in the mood to be ignored, and he was more than willing to fight first and ask questions later if need be.

"Of course, Captain," the man said, holding his hands up in a pacifying motion. "There's a few things I'd like to ask first, and then I promise I will answer all of your questions. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

Steve toned down his suspicious glare at that, letting them say their piece. Lulling them into thinking he was going along with them might end up being helpful, and coming on too strong right now would work against that. "Alright," Steve replied warily.

"Good," the man answered, making a note on the tablet Dr. McDonnell gave him. "Now, what's the last thing you remember?"

Steve felt his gut drop at the question, knowing nothing good came from things like that. "Going to bed. I'd been watching a movie with the Avengers," Steve answered neutrally. He and Tony weren't public yet, so he wouldn't single Tony out. Not when someone could try to use that against him.

"And what was the date?" the man asked with forced casualness.

Steve felt the air push out of his lungs and he closed his eyes. "April 23rd, 2014," he said, every word ripping through him. There was only one reason they'd be asking him that. He opened his eyes that were clear of tears, though he desperately wanted to cry. No point in waiting to know. "What's the date now?"

The woman looked down, starting to type into the tablet, but Steve focused on the man. His brown eyes softened, regret entering his voice. "I'm terribly sorry for your loss, Captain. It's currently September 8th, 2249."

Steve nodded, packing away the grief as he calculated how long he'd been asleep this time. Too long. Far too long. There wouldn't even be a link to his past alive this time. He pushed the number aside once he knew, because he couldn't afford to deal with that right now. That would explain the machines looking unfamiliar, no matter how much a part of him wanted to deny what the man was saying. All the things that had screamed 'wrong' to him made more sense. "What happened?" he asked, keeping his voice firm.

"You really don't remember anything about...?" the man asked. When Steve didn't respond, he shook his head. "There was an attack on April 24th. It was a Hydra uprising led by a man who went by the name of Baron Zemo. Records say you were wounded in the battle, but the helicopter that they loaded you on never made it back to the hospital."

Steve didn't remember any of that. His first impulse was to deny it, but Tony had gotten a knock to the head once and only remembered vague details about the fight afterward. But even then, wouldn't this feel at least a little familiar?

How had he managed to miss over 200 years? He couldn't... Steve couldn't lose his world like that. Not again.

"Dr. McDonnell, if you would...?" the man asked, gesturing to the wall.

"Oh, of course," Dr. McDonnell said, flicking at her tablet. The wall came to life in front of Steve, showing articles from 235 years ago. The newspapers looked blindingly comforting and familiar, and he had to wonder if any of them still existed now. Steve looked away, but his nearly eidetic memory had already seen enough. Captain America Missing In Battle. Gravely Wounded. America Mourns.

Even the technology used to show the articles was painfully familiar, obviously based on Tony's designs. Tony had always meant for a lot of the conveniences Steve had come to take for granted at the Tower to go public one day, and Dr. McDonnell's movements echoed Tony's so closely that Steve could almost see him there. This looked updated and better than the things Tony had had. "So I was hurt, then captured," Steve said, trying to process only what he needed to right now. "Then what?"

"As far as we can tell, Hydra was the one who captured you. Unfortunately, your wounds were too much for the medicine of the time to handle, so they cryogenically froze you, presumably to be able to harvest the serum at a later date," the man replied.

And wasn't that just like Hydra, to hide what they couldn't have? It made Steve sick. Once again, he lost everything to Hydra. He would laugh, if the stabbing pain in his chest reminding him exactly of how much he'd lost didn't hurt so much.

"Stark Industries finally found you a month ago," Dr. McDonnell said, her voice excited. There was hero worship in her eyes, like he was some thrice damned war hero returned from the grave. He'd seen that look in Coulson's eyes the first time he woke up, but surely he'd have been forgotten in 235 years. Who would care about some washed-up super hero from the past?

Couldn't they just leave him alone to die properly this time? Hadn't he earned it?

Steve closed his eyes, telling himself that kind of talk would get him no where. He was alive, and he had to deal with what he'd been given.

"Of course, we have the technology from Stark Industries to revive you now," Dr. McDonnell continued, oblivious to Steve's thoughts. "It was touch and go for a while, but we managed to keep you under until you made a complete recovery. It's really a big honor to meet-"

"Are there many more tests you want to do?" Steve asked, resolutely not thinking of Stark Industries. "I'd like to be alone for a while."

The man nodded, smiling blandly. This time it didn't set off any warning signals, just loneliness. "Of course, Captain. Just a few more tests and questions, then you can have some time to think things over."

Steve nodded, going through the doctor's instructions on autopilot. The man - Dr. Conrad - didn't push for more than monosyllabic responses most of the time, and he left a tablet as he ushered Dr. McDonnell out of the room, saying it had information on the things he had missed. There was an AI installed on it that would answer any of Steve's questions if he had problems operating the tablet, and the sharp pang that went through him as he missed JARVIS went unremarked upon if either of the doctors noticed.

Steve didn't reach for the tablet, lying back on the bed once he was alone and staring at the ceiling without seeing it. At least this time they hadn't made a mockery of him, trying to fool him into thinking it was still the past. How many more times would this happen, waking up to discover the world had moved on without him?

Tony...

Steve closed his eyes, silent tears escaping now that he was alone. No doubt they were monitoring him still, but at the moment he didn't care. The Avengers, all of his friends - his _family_ \- were gone again. He was once again a relic, set adrift just as he had found an anchor.

He wanted to go home.

* * *

Steve knew better than to pick at the food he'd been given. The serum sped up his metabolism, and he needed to eat. He hated wasting food as well, old habits from the Depression never quite leaving him. So he ate the meal, but he didn't taste it. He could have been putting sand in his mouth for all he knew. He tried to remember how long it had taken to adjust to living in the twenty-first century, but it didn't help the fact that he felt like he was right back where he started.

Worse, when he was walking through the halls back to his room, he caught a glimpse of a familiar dark hair. "Tony?" he asked, pulling on the man's arm.

When he saw the man fully though, he realized his mistake. The man looked nothing like Tony. Nothing at all. "Sorry," he said, letting go immediately and retreating to his room.

It was a full day after that before he finally reached for the tablet. The original Avengers were apparently somewhat of a legend in this time, stories that were still passed down to children before they went to sleep. He'd lived through this before, but if possible, the legend had almost grown more than it had after 70 years.

Natasha had lived the longest, the only one of them who died of natural causes. She lived a full life, never marrying, though she did have a daughter.

Clint had died young, staying behind and locking the others out as he contained a melt down at a nuclear power plant. He'd physically knocked Tony out to keep him from staying behind to do it, according to the reports.

Thor disappeared some time after Natasha's death, and no one had heard from him since. Steve wondered if he was still alive somewhere, ruling Asgard. But Thor was currently just as out of reach as the others now, and Steve could only feel empty as he read the words.

Bruce shot himself, finally finding a way to subdue the Hulk long enough for him to end things after the Hulk destroyed a primary school. It hadn't been the Hulk's fault, but without Tony to talk him down, Natasha and Thor had been too late.

And Tony... Steve forced himself to read Tony's file, no matter how empty it left him. Tony held the line against aliens called the Kree. He held even after everyone else had fallen or been taken off the battlefield due to injuries. He held long enough for a sympathetic Kree general and a woman named Carol Danvers to shut down the intelligence that governed the Kree Empire. He died alone.

Steve knew he should be proud of the others' accomplishments. There was information that was missing, he knew. He couldn't say how he knew, but the missing pieces didn't quite add up. Considering how Fury treated him after he'd been de-frosted, Steve supposed that they were withholding things they thought would upset him more. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, but he was used to that.

He wasn't used to the void anymore. He'd fallen in the first time, but with the Battle of New York and the Avengers, he'd been grabbed before he'd fallen too far. He knew he should be feeling pride for the lives they all lived, but every line, every detail pushed him further into the void. Tony shouldn't have died alone. Steve knew how much that would have terrified him, how the emptiness of space haunted Tony's dreams. He should have been there, should have had Tony's back. It felt _wrong_ in a way that Steve couldn't explain that Tony fought alone. 

And Tony... God, Tony never stopped looking for him. The information didn't have a lot in it (It felt like most of Tony's file had been redacted, even if there weren't black lines over it. They had to be hiding something from him. Were they afraid of what would happen if he'd found out Tony had moved on? Had their relationship come out after all?), but Dr. Conrad said he'd been found by Stark Industries. 235 years, and there was still someone out looking for him. Like father, like son, and Tony would have _hated_ that, to find one more way he was like his father. Now he was just another person Steve had left behind.

Steve traced the picture of Tony on the screen. There was silver in his hair, more than Steve had ever seen. It touched the sides of his temples, giving him a distinguished look. He was in a suit with a dark red shirt and tie, just the kind that Steve had always liked. Steve caught himself staring, daydreaming of ways he could use that tie to take Tony apart. There were crows feet around Tony's eyes that Steve didn't recognize, and laugh lines that Steve hadn't had a hand in putting there.

Tony looked happy. Happier than Steve had ever seen him. There was a wedding band around his finger, half-hidden by his jacket in the picture, and that was enough confirmation for Steve about the redacted parts of Tony's file. He wondered who had made Tony that happy. Who had taken Steve's place.

Steve blinked back fresh tears. Tony had the right to be happy, even when it wasn't Steve who made him that way. It had been the same with Peggy, but for some reason this felt like a worse treason. It didn't make sense, because he'd loved both of them as fully as he could, and he hadn't gotten very far with either of them, but for some reason it didn't feel right for Tony to be with someone else. And he hated that, hated that he couldn't even be happy for Tony, because he should be.

He stood suddenly, throwing the tablet against the wall as hard as he could. Dr. McDonnell squeaked, dropping the tray she had been holding as she stood in the doorway, staring at him with wide eyes.

Steve took a deep breath, calming his nerves as he leaned down to help her clean up. He couldn't allow them to see him breaking down. He was still... He wasn't really Captain America anymore, but they still looked up to him for some reason. He couldn't let them see how he was being ripped apart at the seams. He glanced at the clock -surprisingly analog, like all the other clocks in the building - and saw it was time for the tests they liked taking to make sure the treatments had worked.

There was a lot of glass on the floor, probably for blood samples. "Sorry for startling you," he said, carefully picking up the broken glass.

"I should have knocked," Dr. McDonnell said.

She reached for the glass as well, but her hands were shaking. He reached out and caught them, holding them steady. "Be careful. Why don't you get a broom to clean up the smaller pieces?"

"A broom?" Dr. McDonnell asked, blushing slightly as she looked down at their joined hands. "Oh, you mean a cleaning bot. Yes, of course."

A cleaning bot. They were so far in the future that even brooms were obsolete. What was the point of waking up when he was probably just as much of a relic? They couldn't have use for him here.

His tablet fared far better than the tubes. Steve was torn between wishing he had destroyed it and glad that he hadn't been wasteful of something that wasn't even his. He would have to get a job of some sort here eventually. Steve wasn't quite ready to think that far ahead.

But when he picked it up to check the screen, Steve froze when he saw the picture of Tony beaming up at him, looking at something just outside of the picture's range. Just that one picture was able to disarm him. "Who did he marry?" Steve asked quietly.

"Pardon?" Dr. McDonnell said.

"Tony Stark," Steve replied, his eyes never leaving that smile. He wondered if he hadn't been frozen again, if Steve could have been the one to put that smile there. Or maybe it could have only been whoever Tony saw outside of the frame and he'd been better off without Steve. "In this picture, he's wearing a wedding ring."

"Oh, um, I don't think-" Dr. McDonnell started.

"Please," Steve pleaded. "I'd appreciate knowing. You don't have to hide it from me."

"I don't think I'm allowed to tell you," Dr. McDonnell blurted out.

Steve looked away. He debated pressing her for answers, but she seemed about as likely to get too flustered to answer (or worse, burst into tears) as to give him a proper response. Besides, he wasn't about to bully the information out of her. He could try talking to Dr. Conrad, since he seemed to be in charge. "Can you at least tell me why I'm not allowed to know?"

"Well, they didn't want you to be too upset, and there were always rumors about how you and he were... Oh, I shouldn't!"

Rumors. They must have started after his capture. Tony would have been driven to find him. He wondered how long it had taken for the others to convince him to move on.

Steve didn't want to think about it.

"Oh my God. They were _true_?" Dr. McDonnell asked. "Then you were... I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. He met her after you - I mean, I shouldn't-"

"It's okay," Steve said, cutting her off before her chatter drove him insane. "It's... It's good he moved on." And it was, no matter what his gut was telling him. Tony had to have known with the injuries Steve had sustained that he'd be bringing home a corpse. It was good that Tony stopped being stubborn for once in his life, no matter how much the thought of losing him to someone else, just like he'd lost Peggy, only opened the gaping wound further.

"Then you will help! If you cared about Mr. Stark, you'll want to help, right? You're the only one who can!" Dr. McDonnell said. "You have to. Someone has to stop-"

Steve started at the seemingly random topic change. She cut herself off this time, just when she started saying something interesting. "I doubt I'll be much help to anyone," he said, testing the waters. "But who needs to be stopped and what does this have to do with Tony?"

Dr. McDonnell bit her lip. "They didn't say I couldn't... He's just - He's killed so many people!"

"Dr. McDonnell," Steve said, using a hint of his command voice. "What's going on?"

"He's gone bad," Dr. McDonnell said, looking flustered. "One of the Starks. Tony Stark's descendent. He's got the armor and he's leveled _cities_."

 _Descendent._ The word hit him like a punch to the gut, but Steve pushed the feeling aside, ignoring the screaming that said he should have been part of Tony's family. "Show me," he demanded.

The woman hesitated, reaching for the tablet but pausing. "Please," he said.

She nodded, typing a few things in on the tablet. A news article appeared on the screen with a picture of a blue and gold version of the Iron Man armor. It looked sleek and deadly, but the face plate was propped up to reveal an extremely familiar smile that made Steve's heart ache. There were obvious differences - the hair was a little blond, the eyes were green, and the nose a bit smaller, but this Iron Man was enough like his Tony that the similarities were painful. He quickly looked down from the mischievous grin and keen eyes to the text.

The article gave a brief description of Michael G. Stark, a humanitarian with a kind heart that worked in slums and poverty-stricken areas when he wasn't fighting as Iron Man. He didn't sound like the type of man who would destroy cities, but the article detailed a slow descent according to those who knew him: he'd become more withdrawn and angry, until finally the City of San Diego was leveled to the ground with a new weapon from Stark Industries.

Steve had visited southern California while he'd been on tour with the USO. San Diego had a lot of sailors, and some of them had been willing to sit and chat with him, despite the gaudy outfit. They'd given him news of the Pacific, making Steve yearn to do more. The people there had been warm. Friendly.

Now both it and Boston were nuclear wastelands. Millions of people dead in an instant. A camera had caught a picture before it fizzled to static - an image of blue and gold armor standing over the desolation, cold and menacing.

Steve felt a horrified chill settle over him. WMDs were still a new concept for him, and the fact that America had dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese had been a hard pill to swallow when he first woke up. Steve had met the Vice President once or twice, and he'd been a good man. Steve couldn't fathom how a good man could order something so terrible, no matter who the enemy had been. And the sad thing was, Steve almost couldn't tell if Harry Truman had been wrong.

And Michael had dropped two bombs for no reason at all. Steve looked back up at the photo on his tablet, of Tony's smile. He knew Howard had been a terrible father despite a similar smile, but he'd never had the sheer kindness that Tony and Michael shared. Steve swallowed hard, mind racing through the possibilities. Kidnapping? Someone else piloting the suit while they had some kind of leverage on him? Mind control? There was always the possibility that something had happened, that like Howard, this man Michael Stark had changed, but the article had no concrete reasons for that. They were just as baffled as he was.

"How long has this been going on?" he asked, not seeing a date on the article.

"It was three months ago that San Diego and Boston..." Dr. McDonnell said, trailing off tearfully.

"Did you know anyone there?" Steve asked.

"No," she said, looking down and biting her lip. "It's just..."

Steve nodded. He hadn't known anyone at Pearl Harbor, but he and Bucky had felt the same kind of numb shock. Three months and it would still be hard to process. Especially that big of a city. Steve was still having a hard time wrapping his mind around it himself, and he'd seen plenty of slaughter during the war.

"You have to help," Dr. McDonnell pleaded. "You're Captain America, so you-"

"I don't see how much help I could be," Steve replied, staring at the armor. He could beat Tony in the armor, once he knew Tony's fighting style and had some kind of plan. He'd done it plenty of times. There were also times Tony had beaten _him_ though, because Tony was nothing if not inventive. Not to mention the armor really did pack a punch if Steve managed to be caught off guard. Sure, he could come up with strategies, but he was so far out of date that he'd need time to catch up on current battle threats. "The armor Michael Stark is wearing is beyond anything Tony made," Steve continued. "Even with my shield, I'm sure there are people better equipped to take him on."

"You may have more chance than the rest of us." Steve jumped, spinning around to see Dr. Conrad looking at Dr. McDonnell with a stern look of disapproval. "And you were told he wasn't ready for current events, Erica. Captain Rogers needs more time to adjust before we can even think of asking for his help."

"I'm sorry, sir," Dr. McDonnell said, her shoulders slumping.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked sharply. Surely with the technology in the future, a shield and a super-soldier weren't going to be much help? But if there was something he could do, he would do it. Tony hated having... Tony would have hated knowing his tech was being used to hurt people. Steve had seen the nightmares from when Tony fell asleep against his shoulder while they watched a movie late at night. Steve remembered the one time Tony had trembled in his arms, the memory of the soldiers who were protecting him being taken out one by one with Stark Tech still so fresh. Tony had hidden in his workshop the next day, not even letting Steve or Pepper in.

Dr. Conrad sighed. "You won't give up on asking, will you?"

"No," Steve replied, setting his shoulders back. If there was something he could do to help, he would do it.

"Part of the reason finding you was so fortunate was that we believe there's code from the original Iron Man that has been kept through all of the armors," Dr. Conrad said. "It was part of the base code, so archaic that no one realized it was there. Tony Stark probably left it in out of sentimentality, and it's never been corrected."

"Code?" If they wanted code, they were way off base asking Steve. He'd learned a little, looking through some of JARVIS's subroutines when Tony had been explaining it, but he couldn't break Tony's code. That had been beyond him.

But Dr. Conrad was nodding as if Steve had programmed JARVIS himself. "Just so. Your access codes were never revoked, Captain Rogers. Your voice print and the codes are all we need to shut Iron Man down."

The emergency codes. Steve had been appalled when Tony gave them to him. Being able to get data from the armor when Tony was hurt or missing was one thing, but the way Tony described it... ' _You may need to stop me one day, Cap. My security is good, but anything can be hacked. If that happens, you take me out. Doesn't matter what's going on or if I could get hurt - you take it offline. Promise me, Steve. Use the code._ '

And Tony had never taken that code out. For all that the others must have convinced him to move on, he'd never taken out the obsolete code or stopped looking. Steve wondered what Tony's new lover and family had thought about that, if they even knew. God, Tony would never become like Howard, right? He looked too happy in that picture, and Steve couldn't bear the thought of turning Tony into something he hated. His disappearance already hurt the Starks enough.

"All we need is your voice," Dr. Conrad said. "A recording of you saying the code. It should be enough to bring down the armor, since the technology has improved since the 21st century."

Those words snapped Steve out of his reverie. All they needed was his voice and the codes? A _recording_? He couldn't explain why, but it set off alarms, and his gut instinct was to pull back and reassess.

"What would happen to Michael if you caught him?" Steve asked, trying to pinpoint what was wrong.

Dr. Conrad looked startled at the question. "Why, if he survives, he would be brought to trial, I suppose. There's no death penalty anymore, but they would repress his memories and personality and lock him away. He's too dangerous to be released, even for community service."

"And if it wasn't his fault?" Steve pressed, knowing he was on the right track. "If he's being controlled, or if someone else is in the armor, what then?"

"There's no evidence to suggest-"

"Would it be a fair trial?" Steve asked. "If it wasn't his fault, would he be proven innocent, or are you going to scape goat him and hang him out to dry?"

"I'm sure he'd get a fair trial," Dr. McDonnell reassured far too quickly and without any anger at the destruction of _two cities_ Steve would have expected. It was too fast for that sort of forgiveness.

"You promise?" Steve asked.

"Of course. We'll make sure of it," Dr. Conrad replied.

Because doctors could really promise on behalf of the country's judiciary system. Steve didn't think they were just trying to placate him either.

Something was wrong here. This was too easy, and the information they wanted too confidential. It was something that could cripple Tony, or whoever wore the armor if all of this was true.

If it was true at all.

Steve carefully hid the hope that flared up, mentally cataloging the technology he'd seen since waking up. Sure, some of it looked completely different, but a lot of it was technology Tony used. The rest could have been props, fakes just to throw him off the scent.

"I'd like to see him for myself," Steve said finally.

"That would be difficult, Captain," Dr. Conrad said. At Steve's expression, the man held up his hands. "You said it yourself, Captain. You wouldn't be much help against the current technology."

Steve was more than willing to mulishly ignore what he'd said not five minutes ago. "I'd like to see him myself," Steve replied.

"That still won't be easy to arrange," Dr. Conrad said dryly. "It's not like we can just invite him to tea."

"Make it happen," Steve said, feeling confident on calling this bluff. "You're working for some sort of bigwig government, or you wouldn't be working on my case. Get them to track him. Or leak information that I'm here. That should call him out." Steve was pretty sure that whoever they were really working for wasn't one of the good guys, and definitely sure that they shouldn't have the access codes. But he needed them to think he wasn't completely suspicious yet, to give him some time and room to maneuver.

Dr. Conrad sighed. "I'll see what I can do," he said, rubbing his temples.

"But you have to help!" Dr. McDonnell said, taking Steve's sleeve in her hand. "More people will die if you don't!"

Steve closed his eyes. If they _were_ telling the truth, more people would suffer for his mistrust. But he couldn't take the chance when all of this felt so _wrong_.

"You're supposed to be a hero!" Dr. McDonnell yelled. "You're supposed to help-"

"Erica, that's enough," Dr. Conrad said, his tone brooking no argument.

Dr. McDonnell went quiet, and Steve felt guilty. Which may very well have been the point, if they were trying to manipulate him. Steve hated this kind of manipulation. He was just tired of it all.

"He's had a lot to take in," Dr. Conrad murmured to her. "This is why we weren't going to tell him for a while yet."

"But he-"

"Drop it," Dr. Conrad said. Steve closed his eyes, hoping Dr. Conrad would take that as a sign of Steve being overwhelmed by it all. "I believe you have some other duties to attend to, Dr. McDonnell," the man continued.

"Yes, sir," she said, leaving in a huff.

"You'll have to forgive Erica. She's young," Dr. Conrad said, making her earlier reassurance about a fair trial stand out even more.

"I'd like to be alone to think, if you don't mind," Steve said truthfully.

"Of course," Dr. Conrad said. "I'll send a nurse around later to finish the tests."

The tests... That was another thing he needed to plan for. If these people really were manipulating him to get information on Iron Man, they probably weren't the type of people who should have samples of his blood.

Steve waited for Dr. Conrad to leave before looking down at the familiar smile of Michael Stark. He had a lot to think about.

* * *

Steve stared up at the ceiling as he lay on the bed they had given him, tallying up what he had learned. He divided it into two lists. First, what they wanted him to believe. Steve had woken up 235 years in the future. Michael Stark was terrorizing the world in his Iron Man armor. They needed his help to take Michael down by giving them the codes.

But from what he'd seen walking around the hospital, the future didn't look all that different from the past. When he'd been thrown into the 21st century, styles and aesthetics had changed several times while he'd been sleeping. Even the language had changed. The technology here looked fancy at first glance, but it wasn't impossible that some of them were fabricated.

As for Michael Stark, that story didn't add up either. Howard had changed a lot, sure, but he hadn't turned around and started fighting for the Nazis. No matter how embittered and cold Howard had become, he wasn't that sort of monster. Steve was having a hard time believing that the 180 personality shift was all on Michael.

If there _was_ a Michael at all. The pictures looked real and the details had been well thought out, but it could have been falsified. He'd seen some of that technology when Clint was messing around on the Internet, randomly pairing the others on some kind of site that showed what people's babies would look like. The police also had some kind of technology to guess at what an abducted child might look like after so many years, so some combination of the two could produce something realistic.

The problem was that their information felt _real_. He couldn't explain why, but the gut feeling said there was truth to it. But if that were true, then Tony...

No. If this really was a trap, then he wasn't going to give up on Tony still being alive. He refused to give up on the fact that the access codes being a forgotten part of the source code was less likely than trying to shut down Tony himself. That made _sense_ , no matter what his gut said this time.

There was another problem though - what was missing from the information. There were no _dates_ , no sense of time. Not the articles on the Avengers, or even the ones on Michael. He hadn't noticed it at first, but every date he had gotten had been oral, like Dr. Conrad telling him how long he'd been asleep or Dr. McDonnell telling him San Diego and Boston had been destroyed three months ago. Even the clocks were all analog, not digital. He considered that it might be a cultural thing, but it seemed highly unlikely. If that were the case, surely the articles from the past would have had dates on them still.

No one mentioned his shield. Steve had been too deep in his depression to notice and certainly didn't have the will to ask on his own, but not once did anyone say what happened to his shield. The one time he'd tried to ask, he'd been told by the nurse on duty that she didn't know.

There was no doubt about it. Something was fishy around here, and it wasn't the salmon he had for lunch.

Steve sighed, glancing at the hands of the clock, a little annoyed that something so familiar had turned sinister. He wasn't going to be able to find out what it was by just sitting here. He went over the building again in his mind, marking all the places he had spotted CCTV cameras. Thirty minutes to go before the quietest time at the hospital. He just had to wait a little longer, then he could sneak out and hopefully find the truth.

Because he wasn't going to find it here, that was for certain. He'd been stupid and complacent in his depression, easily manipulated like last time when Fury had been stringing him along. He couldn't afford another mistake like that, not when Tony could still be out there.

 _Tony_. Steve could close his eyes and practically feel Tony sleeping against his shoulder like in his last memory. He could see Tony's smiles - the half-asleep one he gave his coffee in the morning. The PR one that Steve both hated and loved, because it usually meant Tony was protecting them or swaying the crowd to their favor, no matter how much Steve hated that it was necessary. The smile when he saw one of the Avengers, a soft but brilliant one of someone who had people to belong to. Tony had a special smile for Pepper and Rhodey, and a bright, sunny smile for JARVIS and the bots when he thought no one was watching or when he had an idea that would revolutionize the world... or sometimes just revolutionize the TV in the rec room.

Then there were the smiles that Steve hoped were just for him. The quiet wonder and open love that Steve could catch in fleeting moments. He'd wanted to see more of those smiles, make them so they weren't rare and exotic, but something he could see every day. But they could never be made ordinary, into something Steve would take for granted, no matter how many times he saw them.

The feel of those lips against his, sometimes with a slight smile, other times with a shocking tenderness or a passion that engulfed Steve whole...

Steve felt an ache settle in his chest. He closed his eyes for a moment, calming himself down. He couldn't think about this now. He rolled over to his side, glancing at the clock again. Twenty-five more minutes.

The wait was long, but Steve was used to stake-outs. Finally, the clock hit 3:00. Steve slipped out of bed, pulling on the blue long-sleeved shirt they had given him. Tony would have laughed, because it was a normal shirt that offered no protection, just like the other five different colored ones that were in there. But the blue was comfort, something familiar he could hold on to.

Getting out of his room was easy. The hospital staff was used to seeing Steve wandering around late at night. There were a few places he'd been told not to go, but he'd had no desire to question that order. Now he had the will, and there was one place in particular he wanted to go: outside.

Come to think of it, keeping him contained in the hospital was probably part of the plan. Yet another mistake he'd made by being complacent.

The cameras were easy to see, and there was enough of a blind spot for him to walk the halls undetected. If they were really keeping an eye on him, then his disappearance would raise the alarm sooner than he liked. But Steve was counting on a laxer security, considering his apathy for the past week and a half. Still, he stayed on camera as long as possible without giving away the direction he was headed.

Finally, he got to the doors. There was a street outside that he could see through the windows. It was usually filled with strange-looking cars that Steve had glanced at a few times and then ignored. Tony had loved his cars... Tony still loved his cars, Steve told himself firmly. There was a chance. Steve wasn't going to think about the odds. He had to keep going.

Right now the street was dark. No cars passing by, which meant they weren't near a busy part of a city. He'd probably have a trek in front of him. He reached for the door, twisting the knob as he pushed outwards.

His hand started to dissolve.

Steve bit back a yelp, not wanting to alert anyone. He pulled back immediately, relief washing through him as his hand reappeared. "What the..." he said, staring down at his hand as he touched it with the other. Still there, still firm under his other hand.

Steve looked at the door, shivering at the cold tingle that went through him. He couldn't leave. He didn't know how he knew that, but it wasn't some kind of illusion on the other side. The door had stopped moving, partially open where the momentum had stopped, and Steve couldn't even reach out to close it.

He stared at his hand for a moment longer before curling it into a fist. That didn't mean he wouldn't try. He looked out at the world outside and took a deep breath, stepping through and ignoring his fear.

Steve gasped awake, sitting up with a start. He was in the same room he'd first woken up in, and according to the clock, not even a minute after he passed through the door. It was still night - and the hospital was quiet.

Strangest of all, he was no longer wearing the dark blue sweater. He was in the same clothes that he had woken up in - a plain white shirt and a pair of brown trousers. Steve looked himself over, making sure everything was in place. Nothing out of the ordinary aside from the fact that he was in the wrong clothes and at least 400 yards from where he'd been a second ago.

Steve knew then he'd been right. Whatever was going on here, he couldn't leave, at least not by conventional methods. He got up and eyed the window in the hall wearily. As he walked over to open it, he stuck his hand out and watched as it started to disappear.

He cursed mentally. There was no getting out that way.

He snuck back to his room, avoiding both people and cameras so he wouldn't have to explain his change of clothes. There was definitely something wrong here, but he was no closer to figuring it out than he was before. When he got to his room, Steve changed and laid down on the bed, once again staring up at the ceiling.

What the hell was going on here?

* * *

Steve stared at the window in the room where the nurses took his blood samples, trying not to noticeably look like he was paying attention to where it was going. If he couldn't escape, he could at least destroy the samples. He was so intent on looking like he wasn't looking, he almost missed the fact Dr. McDonnell came in.

She stood in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her. Her brunette hair was brushed back, cut in a short bob. Steve realized with a start that she had probably been modeled to appeal to him, and didn't that leave a bitter taste in his mouth?

But he couldn't let on that he knew something was up. So he swallowed down the bile and smiled. "Dr. McDonnell. How are you today?"

"I..." she started, looking down. A spike of anger replaced the bile as he recognized the manipulation for what it was. Now that he was thinking clearly, he could see the signs of insincerity. She was just a little too much the naive young doctor to be believable, and too shrewd in responses to calm him.

He couldn't let on that he knew, however, so he forced a smile to remain on his face as she stammered on. "I-I came to apologize for..."

"It's alright," Steve said, unable to stomach hearing any more. "You were upset. That's understandable."

"It still wasn't-"

Steve heard the very familiar whine of a repulsor blast. He spun around, the name on his lips as his heart nearly stopped. " _Tony_."

But it wasn't Tony. He had a brief glance of gold and blue before he was blasted against the wall. The breath left him as he slammed against the hard concrete. His stomach burned, and he put a hand over the wound as screaming reached his ears over the roaring of his own hurt. When he finally staggered to his feet, the other nurses and doctors had cleared out. All except for Dr. McDonnell, who being restrained by armored arms with a powered-up gauntlet aimed at her head.

Damn.

"Let her go," Steve said calmly, holding up his hands to show he was unarmed. He really wished he had his shield, but he couldn't waste time thinking of what he didn't have. "Your name is Michael, right? Just put her down and we can talk."

The face plate of the armor turned his way, the eyes dark. There was no arc reactor in the suit, Steve realized with a start. The blue and gold armor was sleek and smooth, uninterrupted by the light Steve was so used to seeing. It made the armor look menacing, but it was the darkened eyes that sent chills through Steve's spine. They looked bleak and dead, with no hint of the person behind them.

Dr. McDonnell screamed as Michael held her tighter. "Let go!" she cried, tears running down her face. "Captain, please..."

Steve took a step forward. "Michael, please let her go. We can talk-"

"You're Captain Rogers?" the mechanized voice of the armor said. Steve recognized the voice instantly, though it held none of the usual inflection. When Tony spoke in the Iron Man armor, you could always hear _Tony_ behind it. Tony's sarcasm, Tony's warmth, or Tony's worry, every word was obviously Tony under the metal. The few times he'd had JARVIS piloting the armor, Steve had always been able to tell.

Steve had heard that SHIELD initially wanted to keep Iron Man's identity secret, but anyone with half a brain would have been able to see through that ruse after spending five minutes with both of them. It was just as transparent as Superman's glasses if you knew where to look.

But there was nothing in this armor, not even JARVIS. The words were just as dead as the eyes, as if the person inside was nothing more than a machine. If there _was_ a person inside, and it wasn't just someone piloting the suit remotely. The lack of humanity disturbed Steve in ways he couldn't explain, and the feeling was compounded by the ache that searched for the friend he knew in that familiar voice.

"Answer," the armor said, putting the repulsor closer to Dr. McDonnell's head and pulling Steve from his thoughts.

"I am," Steve said, taking another step towards them. There was nothing nearby with enough weight that he could throw to knock Michael off balance enough to let go of his hostage. He may not like Dr. McDonnell or the people she worked for, but he couldn't let her get hurt.

His best bet was to grapple, but that was dangerous for both him and Dr. McDonnell. He wasn't dressed for battle either. "Is something wrong?" Steve asked. "I'd like to help you, if I can. Just let her go and-"

He was cut off by the whine of a repulsor blast, barely managing to roll aside in time for it to miss him. The motion made the wound in his stomach burn, but he ignored it.

Another repulsor blast followed. Steve was running out of time and options. He couldn't keep dodging if he wanted to get close enough to take Michael out. But when he waited for the next blast, it never came.

Steve looked up to see the gauntlet pointing at him, shaking almost imperceptibly. "Michael?" Steve asked. It felt a little presumptuous, taking liberties with Michael Stark's name, but 'Mr. Stark' hurt too much to think about, and some times a more personal approach helped with someone on the edge.

When Michael still didn't respond, Steve tried again. "Michael, I want to help you. Something's wrong, isn't it? Let her go and we can talk."

Michael's words when they finally came were just as dull and machine-like as the rest of them had been, but the meaning was anything but. "Please. Stop me."

Steve went cold. It had to be some kind of mind-control. Control that Michael was fighting and losing. He shouldn't have missed by the margin he did when Steve avoided the repulsor blasts, and he hadn't killed yet. Whether that meant the control was weakening or Michael was having a bout of strength, it might not last for long. Michael may have had no choice but to eliminate the one person who could stop him.

If this was real at all. Steve had no doubt there were recording devices here. Tony had the best security he could on the armor, but if they could get a copy of his voice print... They have some weird technology to keep him from leaving, so it wasn't impossible that they could recreate his voice patterns well enough for a recording to work. It was a risk, one that was too costly either way.

"Captain, please!" Dr. McDonnell said, tears running down her face.

He was between a rock and a hard place and both sides were moving to crush him. "I..." he said, taking a step back. "Michael, please. Let her go and-"

"Stop me," the dead voice said as the repulsor by Dr. McDonnell's head whined threateningly.

"Don't-"

The wall behind Steve exploded, and he ducked to avoid the debris, coughing up dust as he protected his head. Nothing hit him though, and when the crumbling noises stopped, he tried to wave away the smoke.

Then he heard Dr. McDonnell shriek. "Dr. McDonnell?" he asked, stumbling forward as the air finally started to clear.

"Kor'la'vin! Give them back!" Steve heard a mechanized voice say. A mechanized female voice. Unlike Michael's, there was obviously a personality underneath. As the last of the smoke faded, he saw an Iron Man... Iron _Woman_ suit painted a rusty red with a dark grey as a secondary color. The arc reactor in the chest shone brightly, a jewel red color that looked warm. Some part of him felt relieved at the light, despite the differences. It wasn't Tony, but the reactor glowing brightly had always meant Tony was safe. Alive.

"You..." Iron Woman said, her back now to Steve as she stared at Michael Stark. "How dare you... What are you trying to do to Michael's memory!?"

Dr. McDonnell screamed again. "Captain! There's two of them now! Help!"

"Captain?" Iron Woman looked back, seeing Steve for the first time. "Oh my god," she said, her hand coming to where her mouth should be under the face plate. "You're Steve Rogers. That's... But how are you here? How are either of you here? What-"

Steve's head snapped back to Dr. McDonnell as Iron Woman was slammed against the wall with a yellow energy blast.

Dr. McDonnell was aiming a gun at Iron Woman, and her skin turned a familiar shade of greyish-blue with pointed ears. Michael stepped back, disappearing as she snapped her fingers. "I almost had the codes this time," the Skrull said. "Still, if I eliminate you now, I won't need the codes."

It really had been all a lie. Rage raced through Steve's veins. The Skrull's attention was on Iron Woman, who groaned but didn't get back up. It was easy enough to sneak behind her, but when he tried to knock her out, his hand didn't connect. He stumbled forward when his momentum met no resistance, not even touching the Skrull as he went right through her body.

"What?" he said, jumping back as soon as he regained his balance. He looked down at his hands, shivering at the thought of passing through the Skrull. "How did you do that?" he demanded. As far as he knew, Skrulls didn't have the ability to become intangible.

"Your face when you realize you're not even real never fails to be entertaining," the Skrull - Kor'la'vin - said, her lip tilting up in malicious amusement.

He couldn't bring himself to try hitting her again. He took a step back as she stepped forward, then held his ground. He refused to flinch as she reached up to his cheek, but he couldn't feel her fingers as they traced down to his lips. "I learned after the first few times to turn off your ability to affect the real world at the confrontation. You tend to be violent."

"How many times?" Steve asked, fisting his hands at his sides to keep from ineffectively pushing her away. He felt sick. This wasn't the first time she'd done this? How was she erasing his memory?

"Oh, it's been a great many times by now," she said, putting her hand through his chest. Steve couldn't help but jump back this time, breath caught in his lungs as she laughed. "You're more clever than they gave you credit for by half, and the program still had some... kinks to work out. You can somehow tell instinctively when the data is false, so dates were problematic. Figuring out how much encouragement you needed was a hassle as well. If there's none at all, you sit and mope. If there's too much, you figure things out too quickly. I think this was the closest I've gotten to convincing you. I was going to have Michael 'kill' me this time, to see what kind of reaction that would get."

He'd been _toyed_ with. She had been messing with his head for God knows how long now, and for what? To find out the codes? He wanted to look behind at Iron Woman, but her best chance was for him to keep Kor'la'vin busy. "Why?" he asked. "Why did you do this? What's... how come I can't touch you?"

"I just wanted the codes," Kor'la'vin said. "Iron Woman was proving to be too troublesome to my generals. If I had known it would be this easy to take her down, I wouldn't have bothered."

She looked towards the fallen armor as Steve cursed her drifting attention. The reactor was still glowing, but the person inside didn't move. Then she started to walk towards the armor, laughing as she went. Steve felt helpless. There was nothing he could do to help Iron Woman, whoever she was.

"As to what you are," Kor'la'vin continued. "You're now an obsolete hologram based on the recorded memories of Steve Rogers. A hologram that is going to watch as I finally kill this nuisance as punishment for being so stubborn."

A hologram? How... He wasn't even real? Steve looked down at his hands in shock, unable to wrap his mind around it. How could he not be real? And they'd made him to... Steve felt physically sick. He'd been made with the sole purpose to hurt Tony, or whoever now had the armor.

She hauled the still unmoving armor up, holding the weapon right up to the faceplate. "Don't!" Steve shouted, desperately searching for something he could do. But he didn't have his shield, and he couldn't touch anything. He was... He was just a hologram, no matter how sick the thought made him. "Iron Woman, you're not done fighting! Get up, Avenger!" he tried.

"Good night, little girl," the Skrull said.

Before she fired, there was a welcome repulsor whine. Kor'la'vin screamed, falling back as Iron Woman stood on her own, her left arm hanging limply at her side. Her other hand was raised, the repulsor ready to fire. "Dream on, bitch," she said. "Now tell me what you did to Kes and Leon!"

Kor'la'vin hissed, her hand covering a large, bloody spot on her stomach. With her other hand, she touched her ear. "Pull me out of here, now!" she shouted.

"No!" Iron Woman said, shooting the spot where the Skrull had disappeared. Was that what happened to Michael? Were they the ones controlling him?

"No..." Iron Woman repeated, falling to her knees. He could hear this odd breathing sound from the armor, which Steve realized with a start was hitched breathing and quiet tears. He started to reach out to her, then he remembered he wasn't real. He wasn't... Not like she would have felt it through the armor anyway, he thought, feeling more hysterical than he should be. He had to focus and... and do what, exactly? He might not even be _alive_. Nor did he know what year it really was. He was just a ghost made up of numbers and bits of code that had been created to betray Tony's legacy.

He sat down on the ground, pulling his legs against his chest like he used to when he was younger. Bucky had always berated him for it, saying it made him look even smaller, and Steve had gotten annoyed enough that he stopped the habit all together. But right now he wanted to be small again, unnoticed by the rest of the world. Forgotten to history, instead of being created to hurt one of his best friends.

If he wasn't real, then why did it hurt so damn much?

"Captain?"

Steve looked up at the female voice. Iron Woman had the helmet off, revealing a girl who couldn't be older than fifteen or sixteen-years-old. She was dark-skinned with her hair straightened and pulled back into a neat bun. Her eyes were red and wet, but she wasn't crying anymore.

There were so many questions about what was actually going on, but Steve stayed quiet, the words stuck in his throat. He looked down again, closing his eyes.

"Sir?" she tried again. "Are you alright?"

"Does it matter?" Steve asked in return.

"I..." Iron Woman said, sounding very young and uncertain.

"I believe it does, Captain," a very familiar voice said. "It's very good to see you again, Sir. It's been a long time."

"JARVIS?" Steve uncurled a little, deciding the voice was coming from Iron Woman's armor. "How...?"

"An AI is not mortal, Captain," JARVIS replied, his voice far more human than Steve remembered, and much warmer. It was incredible. "I continued to watch over the children after you and Mr. Stark were..."

JARVIS paused, somehow expressing a level of grief that Steve couldn't help but marvel at. He wondered if Tony would be proud of how JARVIS had grown. Then he chided himself. Tony would be over the moon. And if JARVIS was feeling grief, then that meant... "Children? You mean Tony's kids?" he asked, hoping that would change the subject. Because as amazing as hearing how far JARVIS had come was, he didn't want the AI dwelling that grief, especially not when it matched so clearly with his own.

JARVIS didn't reply, but Steve felt a hand brush through him. He jerked back, looking around frantically. He didn't see anyone though. "What?" he asked.

Iron Woman looked just as startled as he was. "JARVIS? What's going on?"

"My apologies," JARVIS replied, a frightening amount of cold fury in his voice. Steve was reminded painfully of Tony's anger when one of the Avengers or his inner circle got hurt. "It appears that Kor'la'vin has blocked quite a lot of your memories concerning the Avengers. She has also mislead you on a great many things."

Steve had a feeling that was an understatement.

"What do you mean, JARVIS?" Iron Woman asked. "How is he even here anyway? The first Iron Man and Captain America died over five hundred years ago. The only reason I know what he _looks_ like are the portraits at Kes and Leo's house. I mean, Michael being a hologram, that they could make, but the Captain feels... well, like you."

 _Five hundred years_. Five... Steve swallowed, pushing the thoughts away as JARVIS started to explain. "Kor'la'vin has been using the recorded memories of Steven G. Rogers that were stolen in 2298 in order to recreate the voice patterns of a code that would shut down any version of the Iron Man armor. She also blocked the memories past April 23rd, 2014, leading you to believe that you were never recovered from Hydra."

Steve felt his breath catch in his throat. He had been found? But the articles... He'd read them, and they felt real. The Skrull said that he'd always been able to tell if the data was false. "The dates... It was never written down," Steve muttered to himself. He'd been _told_ that he'd never been found, not in any of the articles. That's why there had been no dates and no digital clocks. He would have known. "JARVIS, when was I found?"

"Four months later, Captain," JARVIS confirmed. "Mr. Stark refused to stop looking."

A light on Iron Woman's arm lit up, projecting a picture for both of them to see. It was the picture of Tony that Dr. McDonnell had... that the Skrull had shown him of Tony, smiling at someone outside of the frame with a look that Steve had longed for. But this time, the picture was bigger. It'd been cut off, Steve realized. His mouth went dry as he stood and moved closer. _Steve_ was in the other half of the picture. There was a wedding band that matched Tony's on his hand. Tony had been smiling at _him_.

"Tony," he choked out, wishing he could touch the picture like he could a photograph. They had taken this from him, these memories. He'd been _married_ and they'd stolen that away from him. They'd stolen that all away just to turn him into some kind of code designed to hurt the man he'd come to love the most.

Steve's hands fisted at his sides. "Turn me off," he said quietly, closing his eyes. If JARVIS could have fixed this, he would have with that brush into Steve's coding. The fact that he still didn't have them meant this wasn't going to be fixed. He wasn't real, and this wasn't a fight that he could even try to stand up to. He wasn't even alive anymore.

"Captain?" Iron Woman said, looking lost.

"I'm a hologram, right?" Steve said. "A computer simulation that was made to hurt people. Just turn me off and don't turn me back on again."

"Captain Rogers, you're more than-"

"I'm not needed here, JARVIS. Let me go back to sleep."

There was a long silence as Steve waited for a reply. Then with a sorrow that Steve had never heard before in his voice, JARVIS answered, "As you wish, Captain. Miss Rhodes, there is a power source on the east side of the building that is the most likely place to store the crystal with Captain Rogers's memories."

"But I can't... You're asking me to kill him?" Iron Woman... girl, really, she was far too young. She reminded Steve of the kids who'd lied about their age to walk into hell in World War II. She looked at him with dark eyes that were full of grief. Steve felt guilty, asking someone so young to do this. But he couldn't keep going on like this either.

"I died a long time ago, Miss Rhodes," Steve said, thinking back to Tony's best friend who liked to tease Steve about making an honest man out of Tony. Colonel Rhodes had been a good man that Steve respected. And now there was a fifteen-year-old girl with his eyes standing in front of him. "Please. I was never meant to be here. I'm not real, not like JARVIS is. I'm just a bit of code put together to find out how to hurt _you_. Just let me sleep."

She looked like she was about to start crying again, but she nodded. "Okay," she said, walking towards the door. Steve followed after her as they searched in silence. The hospital looked dark and deserted, and Steve wondered how many of the nurses and doctors had been holograms like himself. How had he never noticed? Had he been that far out of it that he couldn't tell the difference between real and machine?

Of course he hadn't. He wasn't even real himself. Steve swallowed around that truth, wondering if the ache where Tony and his friends should have fit was real or a code. He didn't want to feel it, not when it left him empty and raw, a fresh wound bleeding out until there was nothing left but the cold husk that had to keep moving. He couldn't do that again, not when he barely managed to pull through the first time. He was obsolete, and he no longer had things that tied him here.

Finally, they came to a wall on the eastern section of the building. It looked like a normal wall. "It's on the other side?" Rhodes asked. She powered up a repulsor.

"I recommend against that course of action, Miss Rhodes, as there could be delicate equipment on the other side," JARVIS said dryly.

"Oh. Sorry," Rhodes said, lowering her arm.

"What do you think, JARVIS," Steve asked, only just remembering that he couldn't put a hand on her shoulder. "How can we get in?"

"I believe the door is covered by a hologram. Perhaps if Miss Rhodes were to feel along the wall, we might be able to find the access panel. I apologize for not finding a more specific location, but there is something interfering with the suit's sensors. I will put in the access codes once we find the panel."

"I... right," Rhodes said, putting her hand out. The sound of metal against the concrete of the wall was a dull scraping, and Steve tried not to think of a more familiar red and gold that he could almost see if he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Wishful thinking.

"You said..." Steve started hesitantly. "Michael Stark, he's dead?"

Rhodes nodded, still searching the wall. "Michael Stark-Rogers, yeah. Over 200 years ago. We all know the armor, and no one has used those colors since. It wasn't his fault."

Steve felt like his breath had been taken away. _Stark-Rogers_. "He was controlled," Steve said, glad that he'd at least gotten something right.

"By Kang," Rhodes confirmed. "He was - he stopped it in the end. He sacrificed himself to save everyone. He was a hero, no matter what that bitch told you."

Steve closed his eyes, mourning for someone whom he'd missed completely. A hero. That man who had offered nothing but good to the world, twisted until the only option left was self-sacrifice. He wondered if self-loathing ran in Stark blood, and if it had been misplaced atonement as well.

But with a name like Stark-Rogers... "Tony and I adopted?" Steve asked, another punch to the gut. Another thing the Skrulls had taken from him.

"Ms. Potts agreed to act as a surrogate," JARVIS replied. "You refused to let the genetics of the serum be passed down, as there were too many risks involved and your natural genetics would not allow a child a high quality of life. But Mr. Stark was a baseline human with a hereditary leaning towards alcoholism. You convinced him that it would work out. You had two children. James Edwin Stark-Rogers, and Margaret Virginia Stark-Rogers."

Steve closed his eyes, wondering what it would have been like to hold his son or daughter for the first time, or to see them set off on their first day at school. Tony would have...

"I found it!" Rhodes said. She spread her hand against the wall and it opened, revealing a large room filled with machines and computers. It was all alien to Steve, but he thought he recognized some of the Skrull markings. He stepped inside, half-expecting to find himself back in the place he'd woken up in - _Reset_ , his mind supplied - but the Skrull technology apparently covered the whole building. They must not have thought to restrict him from a place he couldn't see.

Steve wondered how that worked. He hadn't been to this part of the building, but he hadn't exactly been able to see through the wall either. If he could tell when data was false... Then again, when the data was _spoken_ , he'd believed it well enough. His normal senses weren't above deception, since Michael had seemed real. Perhaps because it was data he recorded himself rather than data on a tablet that was already stored? Tony would know.

Except Tony really was dead.

There was a large, multi-colored crystal on one of the panels, and he could make out the letters that ran along the base. 'Steven Grant Rogers.' "That's..." he said.

"Indeed, Captain," JARVIS said. "That is where the memories of your human body were recorded and stored. It was stolen in 2298 by unknown thieves. It's been a long time that you've been away from home. But if I may say so, being a hologram made up from these memories does not make you any less real."

"Sorry, JARVIS, but I can't... Not this time." Steve wouldn't be able to take it out. He knew that instinctively. He turned to Rhodes, the only person who could. "Please," he said quietly. "Take it out."

"But..."

"Don't turn me back on either," Steve said. "I'm not... I'm sorry. I know this is a terrible thing to ask, but I've lived my life already. I don't need to drag this out again. Take the crystal out, and never put it back in again."

Rhodes's eyes were wet, but she nodded. "I'm sorry," she said as she raised a trembling hand to the crystal.

"It's okay," he assured her. "This is what I want. I'm obsolete here, not even real. I'm not needed."

"That's not true. You could-" she started.

"The world doesn't need Captain America anymore," Steve said finally.

Rhodes hand rested on the crystal. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "That's not true," she said again, her voice barely a whisper. "We've always needed him."

That was the last thing Steve heard before oblivion overtook him.

* * *

Steve was floating again. Once again, he lacked a body to actually float, but it was the closest he could come to describing the experience. This time, however, he understood what it meant, since the Skrulls weren't around to erase his memories. This was what it was like to be a computer like JARVIS. They were turning him on again, and it had only been five months. September 14th, 2522, little over 500 years since his death. Couldn't they just let him sleep?

There was what Steve could only call new data in front of him. Well, not in front of him exactly, but he was able to open and look at it, in whatever weird ways that computers worked. Tony would know. But Tony was dead, and so was the real Steve. Steve debated opening the data, but he decided if all he was going to do was be maudlin, he might as well check it out.

The packet contained a lot of information about the five hundred years since he... since the real Steve Rogers died. Innovations, the Stark-Rogers family tree, the evolution of the Avengers. Steve ignored all of that for now. He could go back to it later. What mattered now was the information the Skrulls had left out.

The other Avengers' lives were more or less the same. But Tony's... Five years after they'd started dating, Tony had tried to propose. He apparently had taken Steve to the same shabu shabu restaurant where they had one of their first 'official' dates.

_Steve hadn't actually realized Tony was courting him, not until Tony's hand brushed across his a little too intimately. Steve looked up in surprise and Tony immediately pulled back. "Hey, that's okay too. We can keep things secret in public. I don't mind. We just haven't had much time alone together recently and I... You know what, never mind. You're right. It's good to be secret," Tony babbled._

_Leave it to Tony to completely forget to tell a person they were going on a date rather than just having lunch. Steve had no doubt if he'd said something about it now, Tony would be completely baffled and certain that he had asked properly. The problem was what did Steve want to do about it?_

_Steve didn't let on that this was a revelation though. He sat in his room that night, thinking over the past dinners and times he'd hung out with Tony. The next morning he went to Tony's office and brought him his favorite coffee from a few blocks away. "Sorry about yesterday," Steve said, leaning over the desk. "I hadn't really thought about it, and I was surprised. But I've been thinking things over, and I think I'd like everyone knowing."_

_The look of surprise on Tony's face was a little heartbreaking. "Steve, you-"_

_Steve didn't wait for Tony to finish his sentence, instead walking around and stealing his first kiss. When Steve pulled back, Tony had one of the most brilliant smiles Steve had ever seen on him. "That okay with you?" Steve asked, his heart pounding._

_"Yeah. Yeah, A-Okay, Cap," Tony replied, cradling the coffee against him. Steve looked back as he left and saw Tony staring down at it with a small smile. Steve resolved to see those smiles as often as possible._

Steve pushed the memory away, knowing that thinking about the way Tony's lips had felt against his would only make things worse. He continued with the data. The proposal itself was recounted in an interview that Steve stared at and didn't touch for a minute, then he played the video.

_"I was really nervous," Tony admitted, waving his hands about with Steve's arm slung over his shoulders. "I mean, how do you propose to Captain America? With apple pie and fireworks? Except Steve hates fireworks and he's always exasperated when I bring up apple pie and bald eagles-"_

_"Tony," Steve said, with the aforementioned look of exasperation. "You're being ridiculous."_

_"Then he does **that** , and how is that not supposed to make you nervous?" Tony said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Steve leaned over and kissed his temple, earning him a small smile. "Anyway, Steve had to take a call, but I accidentally dropped the ring in the soup. I was trying to fish it out when Steve came back saying that there was an emergency and the Avengers were needed. I barely had time to tell the waiter to save the pot for when we came back."_

_"Then you got yourself badly injured and snuck out of the hospital," Steve said, pulling Tony closer. There was a look of reproach in Steve's eyes, and a barely hidden fear. "You scared me half to death. Don't do that again."_

_"It was the **ring** , Steve. It was important!" Tony said, taking hold of Steve's hand and squeezing it gently._

_"Not more important than your life," Steve replied, but he squeezed Tony's hand back. "I was so furious when I finally found him staring at his phone in front of the restaurant. I started to yell at him, but Tony was so out of it that he was ignoring me, which only made me angrier."_

_Tony looked sheepish at this. "Sorry, honey," he said, snuggling a little closer. "But anyway, JARVIS finally got through to the owner, who rushed over since I was refusing to leave until I spoke with someone."_

_"Normally I would just drag him away, but Tony had found one of his older armors and he was staying put. He was too out of it from blood loss for me to try anything."_

_"I did say I was sorry?"_

_Steve shot him a look that Tony just smiled cheekily at. "When the manager got there and said they had found the ring, I was so shocked. But Tony didn't even look at me. The manager handed over the ring and as soon as Tony had it, he fainted dead away, armor and all."_

_"It was important," Tony muttered, his cheeks coloring faintly as Steve's expression softened. "So then the next time I woke up, I started panicking because I couldn't find it. And this smug bastard was already wearing it. So I-"_

Steve stopped the interview playing. He stared at the two of them, with matching rings. They both looked older, having seen years that Steve didn't remember. He could hardly even think about marriage right now. Yeah, he wanted something long-term and he hoped that Tony was that person, but neither of them were anywhere near ready for a step like that last he remembered.

He skipped through the information on the kids, not sure if he was ready for that yet. He got to the file on his death and felt a sense of the surreal. It was like he was Tom Sawyer, looking in on his own funeral. He was surprised to find that the articles were already familiar. They were the articles on Tony's death that the Skrulls had given him, but they weren't just articles about Tony.

Steve had fought beside him. He'd had Tony's back, up to the very end. Steve looked through the photos of the grim scene. Tony was older than Steve had ever seen him, with laugh lines and bits of grey at his temples. He'd look distinguished if it weren't for the fact he was still wearing ridiculous red and gold armor. The armor itself was practically molded to Tony's body, punctured and twisted, one leg obviously shattered. His eyes were closed, and the reactor was dark, but he was cradled in Steve's arms, his head against Steve's shoulder.

Steve also looked older, in a uniform that he didn't recognize. He had his shield in front of them, warding off any other attackers. There was a blood mark on Tony's forehead that looked like it had come from Steve's bloody lip rather than from a wound. There was a spear or weapon of some sort in Steve's other shoulder, going straight through, but Steve's face looked peaceful. They'd protected the city, and he'd had Tony's back up to the end. He wasn't alone.

If Steve had a body, he'd be weeping. As it was, an ache settled in his wires. It reminded him of how much he'd missed. This was his _life_ they had stolen from him, giving him an empty hole where the memories were supposed to be. They had taken this from him, and Steve just wanted to be left alone.

"Please," he heard a soft voice say. It was a girl's voice - Rhodes - and she was crying. "Why aren't you working? What did I do wrong?"

Steve didn't want to come back. He didn't want to start again.

"Please work! I can't..."

Steve would have sighed if he had the breath. He couldn't just leave a girl crying either. He looked through the data, looking for any means to help. When he found nothing there, he tried to focus on a body. Kor'la'vin had said he was intuitive when it came to technology, so maybe if he just...

Steve gasped in surprise (was that even real? How did breathing work?) as his body formed. He was standing in a poorly lit room that was an amalgamation of technology. He thought he recognized bits of the Skrull machines, but the rest was completely foreign. It was a hidden base owned by the Stark-Rogers family for generations, and that had been forgotten by everyone but JARVIS for at least a century. The machines had been cobbled together by Rhodes in an effort that had probably taken months to get right. He couldn't have said how he knew this, but he did.

"I'm sorry!"

Steve turned around, noticing the weight on his arm. His _shield_. It rested on his forearm, and he realized he was also wearing his old uniform. He knew it wasn't real, but the familiar weight of it comforted him more than he could say.

Rhodes (Susan Rhodes, though he couldn't have said how he knew her given name either) was standing there, looking a lot worse for the wear. There was a dark bruise on her cheek and a cut on her forehead, along with numerous cuts in her clothes. Her arm was in a sling, but it didn't look broken.

"Are you alright?" he asked, taking an automatic step towards her.

"I'm really sorry," she repeated again. "You said not to wake you up again, but they took down JARVIS and I can't-"

"Easy," he said, reaching up to touch her shoulder where the least amount of cuts were. He remembered just a second too late that he was a hologram, but his hand didn't go through her. He must be substantial again. "Slow down. Tell me what happened." He used a hint of his command voice as he spoke, hoping it would soothe her.

Susan took a deep breath and he was reminded of how painfully young she was. She was trembling, but she didn't fall apart. She bit down on her lip, and he winced internally at the blood he saw, but she still didn't break. She seemed awfully close though. "I can't... I'm not like Kes. Kes could fix him, but I don't know enough about JARVIS's codes. So I had to shut him down before the virus took over completely."

There her voice wavered, and Steve squeezed her shoulder gently in support. "You did the right thing," he said calmly, already missing JARVIS's calm voice. "Who's Kes?"

"Kestrel Stark-Rogers," Susan replied, looking down. "They took her and Leon. They're twins. My best friends. And Kes should be the one in the suit, 'cause it's hers. But I can't find where they've been taken."

Kestrel and Leon Stark-Rogers (the surname lasted for so long? Steve was surprised. They must have kept it for some reason or another), age seventeen. Kestrel was a genius at mechanics and robotics with long dark hair that ran in waves down her back with dark green eyes. She was _definitely_ part of the Stark line with that chin. Leon had dark brown hair and a goofy grin. He was... the current Captain America. Steve's throat went dry at that. There was still someone out there, taking care of the shield and protecting people. From the records, Leon was young, but very kind.

Steve couldn't say how he knew all of that, other than that there was something more in that data packet than his life details. If he was instinctively reading it, he didn't know how. He still couldn't imagine raising a family with Tony, more than something in the far distance that he knew he wanted at some point. But here was their legacy, their family. Steve hadn't given his genes, but they kept his name. Stark-Rogers. Still together for over five hundred years...

"So the Skrulls have them?" Steve asked, feeling cold. He didn't like the thought of anyone else in Kor'la'vin's hands. He could see the answer in the files, but he wanted her to deny it.

"Yeah," she said, looking down.

"But what about-" Steve stopped as the information came flooding in. Susan's parents were dead, and recently too. During the same time that Kestrel and Leon were captured. She couldn't go back to the Stark-Rogers family because the Skrulls had framed Susan for the murders. She was wanted all across the galaxy (and wasn't that something, across the _galaxy_ ). To ask about her parents and the Stark-Rogers family would be cruel. And she'd been dealing with all of this alone since before she rescued him.

"I didn't do it," Susan said, her eyes filling with tears. She misinterpreted his question, but it didn't matter much right now. "I know the articles say I did, but I didn't kill my parents and take Kes and Leo. And no one else can get Kes and Leo back! The police won't even _look_ , not in the right places, and-"

"Easy," he said again, pulling her into a tight hug. "I believe you. It'll be okay." He couldn't have said why he believed her. She was right. The articles weren't tampered with and had some pretty compelling evidence. But JARVIS had been with her, and Steve trusted his instincts. If he'd been paying attention, he'd have known something was off at the hospital long before he figured it out. Now they were telling him to trust her.

She cried against him, leaving Steve to wonder how long she had been holding this in and pushing herself to keep going. Fifteen-years-old and driving past the limits of how far she should have been able to go. With her parents and JARVIS gone, she needed some kind of guidance. Steve wasn't sure he'd be much help, but he could at least help her find some new clothes and food. He could help her survive, train her so she had a better chance at winning.

The question was, did he want to? He wasn't even _real_ , and he'd only be able to interact with a set amount in this world. To start over again... He had the notes on the life they took from him, but there was still a raw wound. Maybe it would be different if he had those memories, but now it was just a bitter platitude that didn't change the fact that he had lost everything a second time. Christ, he'd only just started getting over Peggy and the others. He'd just gotten Bucky back, and him, Tony and the other Avengers...

"I'm sorry," Susan repeated again. Susan Rhodes, Iron Woman, searching for the Stark-Rogers twins. She said she still needed Captain America. Even after five hundred years, people still believed in Captain America. Could Steve Rogers really say no?

As much as he desperately wanted to say yes, he could turn away from it again, Steve knew the truth as the weight settled on his shoulders. He couldn't just leave this alone. Couldn't leave Susan alone.

Just until she can get JARVIS back, he promised himself. "You'll get them back," he murmured softly to her as he rubbed her back. "You've been brave so far. You'll do it."

"I don't feel very brave," Susan said, her breath hitching.

He pulled back a little, wiping away her tears. The motion felt so natural that he wondered if he'd ever done this with his daughter. Some instinct told him he had, just like he'd known losing Tony meant more than losing Peggy, who he'd lost before they could start their relationship. Margaret Virginia. With a name like that, he and Tony must have had a hell of a fight. "Just because you don't feel like it, doesn't mean that you aren't," he said. "And you haven't let them beat you yet."

"I wish I could sometimes," Susan admitted quietly, practically voicing Steve's own thoughts. "Because everything's gone wrong and I can't fix it, not the way Kes or Leo could. But I can't... Kes is my best friend, and Leo is..." There was a slight color to her cheeks as she sped up her speech. Steve dutifully refrained from commenting as she went on. "I can't leave them with the Skrulls. And JARVIS said some of the coding they did to you was hers, so they've got to be hurting them if she went along with it."

"And that's why you're brave," Steve said, feeling the ache himself. He wondered how hypocritical he was if he didn't quite believe his own words. He was just so _tired_. "So stow that talk, Avenger. There's no quitting," he said, almost more to himself than to her.

"I'm not good enough to be an Avenger," Susan said, looking down.

"You're good enough for me. I think I've got a pretty big say, don't you?" he asked, swallowing down his own feelings. He couldn't let her see that. Dr. Erskine flitted across his memory, pointing at Steve's chest solemnly. He smiled at the memory, feeling old. Well, he was over six hundred years. That was plenty old. "Someone once told me I shouldn't be the perfect soldier," he said. "He wanted me to remember what it was like to be the little guy. You know what I learned as the little guy? It's that I don't have to be perfect or win every fight. You just gotta keep fighting."

"Does that mean you'll...?" she asked, looking up at him briefly, then down again. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you after what you said on the Skrull base, but I don't know what else to..."

"You made a good call," Steve said. "I don't know how much help I can give you since I'm not a computer wiz like Tony or JARVIS, but you're right. We can't just give up, can we?" Because even Steve Rogers needed to hear that every so often too.

He hugged her again, careful of her bad arm, before letting her pull away. She still wouldn't meet his eyes. "I tried... I'm not smart enough-"

"You were smart enough to make it this far," Steve said firmly, eying her shoulder now that she was calmer. "And that's pretty smart from what I've seen of your files."

"I can't undo the lock on your memories though," she said, biting her lip. "JARVIS had started a little before... And Kes could do it easy, but I'm not..."

Steve felt his breath freeze in his lungs, like they had been all those years in the ice. "It's not permanent?" He had assumed that JARVIS would just be able to fix it, but if it would take a while...

"It-It shouldn't be," Susan said, looking uncertain. "JARVIS said they were just locked, not deleted, so you should be able to get them back. The lock was complicated though, and he didn't want to tamper with it without a thorough scan for fear they'd be erased completely."

That didn't exactly make things easier, but it was enough to bolster his spirits. Time was a great healer. With his memories returned, the ache would still hurt, he was under no illusion of that. But his older self would have more experience in dealing with it. He'd have all those memories he'd been robbed of to comfort himself with. Memories he'd never had the chance to have with Peggy. It would help some of the pain of missing that with Tony too.

Steve opened his eyes and let out the breath he'd been holding. He hadn't realized he'd done either. "It's okay," he said, meaning it for maybe the first time since this mess had started. "If they can... If there's a chance my memories can be restored, then I can wait for it. Right now we have to get your friends back."

Susan looked up, her brown eyes still wet. He smiled at her crookedly, something he hadn't been able to do since he found himself in this new time. "I..."

"We can do this," Steve said, keeping the eye contact. He wanted to say 'you' instead of 'we,' but he had the feeling she would appreciate the plural more. "It's just gonna take some work. Don't stop thinking that we can. If things go wrong, we keep trying."

Susan hesitated a moment longer before nodding. He might not be the real Steve Rogers, but he could be what she needed him to be. "I... thank you," she said, sounding close to tears again. "I know I'm not-"

"You _are_ ," Steve said firmly. "I meant it when I said to stow that talk. No matter what doubts you have, you made it this far when no one else has. That makes you the right person for the job."

"And we'll make it the rest of the way?"

"We'll make it," Steve reassured her. He could do that much for her, right?

"Thank you." She bit her lip again, but didn't let the tears fall as she turned back around and rummaged through a small bag with her good hand. She came up with a very familiar-looking crystal.

"Is that the crystal with my memories?" Steve asked, confused. He'd thought it had to be plugged in, since there was too much complex data on the crystals for a normal computer to keep going by itself, if even the Skrulls had kept it hooked up.

But Susan shook her head. "This one was with yours on the Skrull base. It's dangerous though. Everyone always says it is, and JARVIS said not to touch it before I had to take him off-line."

"But you think it will help?" Steve said, seeing why she brought it up.

"Well, you said you're not very good at computers," she said, looking down. "I mean, not that you won't be a big help and I already feel better, but you-"

"It's alright," Steve said as a small smile flitted across his face. "I know it's not my strongest point. But those are someone else's memories, right? Who could be that dangerous?" Steve wished he knew more about computers. He could get by on them, and Tony had taught him how to put one together once, but code was something he hadn't needed to know too much about. His current instincts on how to interact with data probably wouldn't be enough to keep an evil mastermind from taking over the system and shutting things down. Even when Ultron popped up, Steve mostly left the tech things to those who could do it quickly while he directed and smashed robots. He could probably learn, but without actual notes on the subject, he could only do so much. They might not have time for him to figure it out, either.

Whoever he'd been expecting, it wasn't what came out of Susan's mouth. "Anthony Stark," she said as Steve gaped. "The original one. You know, from your time."

"Tony..." Steve said, feeling like the ground was falling out from under him. _Tony_ was in that crystal? Tony's data had been stolen along side his, constantly in Steve's orbit even when he hadn't known it. All this time Tony had been... "Wait, Tony's dangerous?"

"He nearly blew up the whole facility once when Stark Industries tried to access the information," Susan said, taking a step forward. Her hand had been raised, like she meant to comfort him, but she pulled it away after a moment's hesitation. "He was also apparently accessed by the Skrulls before they tried you. I don't think that one ended well either."

It rankled a little to know they had considered Steve less dangerous than Tony. But at the same time, he could see why Tony would be the better threat as a computer. He also hoped Tony had managed a lot of damage before the Skrulls shut him down.

"Well," Steve said, almost unwilling to give up the crystal. He handed it over in the end, looking at the computer in longing. It was dangerous, but... "It's probably our best chance."

"But what if he tries to shut us down?" Susan asked.

"He wouldn't shut me down, not without making sure I wasn't who I said I was," Steve said confidently. Even if they had messed with Tony's memories like they had Steve's, Tony would think twice before shutting down Captain America. "Not right away. We have a chance to convince him before he tries anything. It should work."

"That's a big should," Susan said, looking at the crystal in trepidation. "If he takes out this place, I don't know..."

It was a terrible risk. And maybe it was a little selfish for Steve to insist on putting the crystal in. But while he did have a certain affinity for the computers and code now than he had before, he still couldn't do half the things Tony or JARVIS would be able to, and they very frankly needed those skills and needed them badly. This wasn't just for him. This was their best chance.

"The longer the Stark-Rogers twins are in the Skrulls' hands, the worse it will get, right?" Steve asked.

Susan bit her lip and nodded. "JARVIS said some of the coding for you had to have been done by Kes. I don't know how they made her do it, because she _wouldn't_ , I swear, but-"

"I know," Steve said soothingly. "I know some of the Skrulls' methods. I don't blame her for what happened. She may have actually helped, because there has to be a reason for me being able to tell the difference between data that was false and things that were true."

Susan looked down. "She still won't forgive herself."

Steve sighed. He supposed some things were hereditary. "We'll tell her not to blame herself when we get her back," Steve said with a small smile. "But that means we don't have time for me to try to learn my way around the systems, not when I could accidentally give us away if I make a mistake. We need Tony for that. He might be able to fix JARVIS too."

She stared at the crystal. It was both danger and a possible savior, and it was a hard choice for someone so young. Steve couldn't take this choice from her, no matter how much he wanted to see Tony again. It was her life in the balance here. Her choice.

"I trust him," Steve said. "He should still trust me, no matter how damaged the data is. It's our best chance, but it is dangerous. You're right, he could just lash out before we have a chance to talk. It's up to you if you want to put it in."

"Rhodeses are supposed to be the sensible ones. We're not supposed to be reckless," Susan said, sounding like she was quoting someone on autopilot.

"You're wearing the Iron Man suit," Steve said with a grin. "Iron Man was never known for being sensible."

"What the hell. It's not like my life can get any worse," Susan said, taking a deep breath.

"You know when you say things like that, they usually get worse," Steve said with a touch of reproach.

"Didn't ask your opinion," she muttered as she walked over to the console.

She was a spitfire, this Susan. She was scared and alone, but she could do this. Colonel Rhodes would have liked her. "Wasn't that why you turned me back on?" Steve asked.

"Hush," she said. She looked a lot better for having decided on a course of action. She was still trembling, but the fact that she was talking back meant she'd pull through. Steve felt pride growing in his chest. He may not have known her that long, but Susan Rhodes was strong. She'd make a good pilot of the armor with a little training, because she certainly had the heart for it.

Steve held his breath as she plugged the crystal in next to the one with Steve's name. She typed into the panel in front of her, then closed her eyes. "I hope you're right," she said, her voice only trembling a little as she brought her hand down one more time.

Steve jumped back as a man appeared next to him. It was Tony, but he was older. Much older. There was more silver in his hair than before, and a few more wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. There was a scar just above his eyebrow, and his goatee was a little different. He wore a suit that Steve definitely approved of, well fitted with a dark red shirt underneath that he kind of wanted to see more of.

But Tony didn't remain that way for long. The image shimmered, leaving Tony younger than Steve had ever seen him, a tank top and jeans replacing the suit, and the arc reactor shining from his chest. Figures that even though he'd got rid of it, it was still part of him. Steve also noted that there was still a ring around Tony's finger, and he didn't know what to make of that.

Brown eyes snapped open, and there was blind fury in them that Steve probably should have expected. "So you want to try again?" Tony spat, his voice washing over Steve like a balm.

"No," Susan said, shaking her head. "That's not-"

"Bad move," Tony said, cutting her off as the lights flickered. "I'll-"

" _Tony_ ," Steve said, his voice breaking on the two syllables. It was no more than a whisper, but Tony's head snapped around to him. Anger left his shoulders for a moment, his face softening. "You're..." Tony said. Then he turned back around to Susan, rage that would have made Bruce proud in his voice. "Is that the kind of game you're playing now? That's not just a bad move. That's catastrophic."

"Tony, just _listen_ ," Steve said. "You-"

"This ends now," Tony said, his eyes going distant as the lights flickered again.

This was not going according to plan. "Captain!" Susan said, the panic in her voice rising.

"Were you going to tell me you were recording our memories?" Steve asked, going out on a limb. Because he certainly never would have agreed to it, but here they were, memories recorded for the Skrulls to use as they wished.

Tony was startled back to the present, his eyes wide and with just a hint of guilt. "That's... I was going to explain."

"You were going to..." Now _Steve_ was angry. Sometimes he hated being right. "So you were just going to record everything without our permission, without thinking of how _dangerous_ that information could be in the wrong hands!"

Steve took a step towards Tony, who now looked panicked and dismayed. "It was protected!" Tony protested.

"Not protected enough!" Steve yelled back.

"It lasted at least five hundred years," Tony said sullenly, looking down. Then he spoke softer, "And it sounded like a good idea at the time."

"A good idea! For a genius, you are an _idiot_. Do you have any idea what they-" Steve had been moving forward to take Tony by the shoulders and shake him, but his hands went right through him like a ghost. Steve stepped back again, surprised. "What?"

He couldn't touch Tony? After all this time and he couldn't... He could interact with the real world and give Susan a hug, but he couldn't touch Tony? Steve took another step back, fighting to keep the grief off his face as he turned to look at Susan. "Susan? What's wrong? Why can't I...?"

"I... I don't know," she said, looking like she was close to tears again. She raced over to the panel, looking through lines of code. "Maybe the Skrulls didn't give him Kes's code?"

Tony looked back and forth between the two of them, confusion warring with suspicion. "What's going on here?"

"Are you going to _listen_ this time?" Steve said, sending Tony a glare and motioning to Susan, who was now noticeably shaken.

Tony, at least, had the decency to look sheepish. "Look, you can't exactly blame me. The last four times they plugged me in, they were trying to rewrite my code to make me into a subservient AI."

That explained why Tony's code was thought of as dangerous. "I can blame you for creating this mess in the first place."

Tony winced. "Touché."

Steve nodded to Susan to speak. This was her story to tell, after all.

"I... um," she said, looking back and forth between Tony and Steve with something like awe in her eyes. "Sorry. I'm not used to meeting people who are in the history books. I'm Susan Rhodes. My family... They've taken Kes and Leo, Sir. Your descendants. Well, the Skrulls have. And I'm trying to get them back, but I don't... It's only me now, since they took down JARVIS."

Susan looked down, and Steve picked up the story to give her a moment to compose herself. "I'm pretty sure you've met the Skrulls who did it. When they decided you were too difficult to get the access codes from, they tried me. They..." Steve swallowed, taking a deep breath. "They messed with the code and blocked my memories. Apparently no one ever took out my voice print and access codes to the armor, so they tried to manipulate me into telling them the shut-down codes."

"A minor fault. Going to be fixed in all future codes," Tony said, looking furious. "Did you know they tried this crap on you at least thirty-five times? And that was _after_ they tried to do what they attempted with me, just trying to force you to be obedient. Did they even read the history books about what you're like?"

"How are you...?" Steve asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. Thirty-five times?

"Looking through your code to see-"

"Tony, there's a thing called _privacy_ ," Steve snapped, feeling violated. "You can't just go looking through that!"

"Relax, Honey Bee. I'm not looking through your thoughts or anything. I had to make sure you were real. I've only looked at the changes they've made to your source code to see how much damage they did and if it's fixable," Tony said, a bit of hurt creeping into his tone. "Even I wouldn't do that..." he said under his breath.

Okay, maybe he'd made a misstep with that. Tony was working with many more years of trust than Steve was. Before he could apologize, Susan spoke up. "You can fix the mind block?"

"I can do more than that," Tony replied. "I've isolated the code that makes him tangible, so I can apply it to me as well. Beautiful piece of work, that one. Seriously, this code is sexier than the kinky triplets in '01, and they were mind-blowingly hot."

"It's Kes's code. I don't know what they've done to her, but she wouldn't do it willingly," Susan said. Her head was up and she was making eye-contact, daring either of them to contradict her.

"Yeah, that was obvious. She wouldn't have slipped in Cap's ability to tell when data was fake otherwise. There's a whole slew of things in here meant to keep him from falling for the act," Tony said absently.

"You mean..." Susan said, her eyes going wide.

Tony shot her a wide grin. "She's fighting back, kiddo. And she's brilliant. She's left clues all over the place for those who know where to look."

"So we can get her back?" Susan asked, looking to Steve.

He moved to stand beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. He nodded as she bit her lip, smiling encouragingly at her. "We'll get her back," he said.

"Her and your boyfriend," Tony added.

"He's not my boyfriend," Susan insisted, turning a little pink. "He's Kes's brother and..."

"And he's hot. Good catch," Tony said with a smirk, bringing up a holographic screen with a bunch of code that he scrolled through. Then he brought a second screen up with more code, switching between the two with speed that Steve could barely follow.

"Is he always like this?" Susan demanded.

Steve laughed, feeling lighter than he had since he had fallen asleep beside Tony watching the movie. "You get used to him."

"Heads up, Cap," Tony said, not looking up from the screens. "Giving you back your memories. This may tingle."

Steve's breath caught. He hadn't expected to get his memories back this soon. If it'd take JARVIS a while to undo it, shouldn't it take Tony the same time? He wouldn't be reckless with Steve's code, that was for sure. It was Susan's turn to smile hesitantly up at him, a pale imitation of the smile in her file, but still beautiful. "That'll make things better, won't it?"

"I hope so," Steve said.

"Fair warning, he gets cranky in his old age," Tony said with a smirk.

Before Steve could reply, the memories rushed back. It felt like a punch to the gut, and Steve fell to his knees as the breath left him. He heard Susan call out to him, but he was too overwhelmed by the information that flooded him to respond.

_-Tony's face as Steve confronted him about the ring, since Steve had been worried sick when Tony had been injured. The utter panic as Tony babbled out excuses, only silenced when Steve kissed him tenderly. "You gonna ask me properly, or do I have to do something drastic?"_

_-Clint's whoop as they announced the wedding, slinging an arm around both of them and proclaiming the bachelor party was on him._

_-Tony fumbling the ring up on the altar, staring up at Steve in wonder as he laughed, catching the ring in mid-air. The look of outrage Tony had when Steve went back on his promise and shoved the cake in Tony's face._

_-Knocking on Sam's door after their first big fight after the marriage. Steve didn't know if he could keep the relationship up, not if Tony could condone... Sam had taken one look at him and pulled him inside. He'd listened as Steve talked about the fight, then he pulled Steve into a tight hug. "Steve, you're one of my best friends. And you've got a lot of good reasons to be angry with him. But you know, it takes two to start an argument."_

_-Pepper's surprise when they asked her to become the surrogate mother. "Tony Stark, if you push parenting on me like you leave me the paper work, I **will** turn into a super villain and ruin you."_

_-Natasha laughing as Tony held James for the first time, stiff and awkward, terrified that he would drop the baby. She came up behind him, holding both Tony and the baby steady until his husband relaxed. Clint gave them both a thumbs up, then asked if he could steal James for a second. "You're gonna be spoiled rotten, kid," he'd said. "And Uncle Clint will make sure of it."_

_-Standing at Clint's funeral, hugging Natasha as she cried and Tony held James, standing in the back with a blank expression that Steve knew hid guilt as he looked at the grave. Clint had been brave, so brave, but God, why him?_

_-Bucky and Rhodey babysitting James in Clint's place for date night, Tony hovering and not wanting to leave. Bucky poked James's chubby cheeks with his metal hand just to freak Tony out more. "He's named after me," he said, still a little blank, but with enough of the old Bucky underneath that it made Steve smile._

_"In your dreams, Barnes," Rhodey replied, shoving Steve and Tony out the door. "He's totally named after me."_

_-Bruce's fond exasperation as Steve paced the floor. Tony was in Tokyo for business and James had a cold. Steve was terrified with every little sneeze, and Bruce's tea failed to calm him down. "Steve, he's fine. He'll be over it in a day or two, healthy as ever. Now sit down before I let the Hulk out to sit on you."_

_-Thor throwing little Margret in the air with a hearty laugh, ignoring Steve and Tony's panicked cries. "Aye, she will be a fine warrior with eyes like these. I look forward to teaching her how to hunt!"_

_Sam shrugged as Steve looked over to him for help in the sanity. He was helping James build legos in the corner, away from the madness. "Hey, man. You chose your friends, not me."_

_-James's first day of school, and Steve was watching as he bounced off to the car. What if he was bullied? He was five and had a big mouth, and God, was this how his mother felt when Steve had come home with bruises? "Relax, Apple Pie," Tony said, wrapping his arms around Steve's neck and kissing him. "You still have one munchkin in the nest. James will be fine."_

_-Margaret taking her first step, tumbling into Steve's arms after she got two feet on her own. He held her tightly, laughing as he kissed her forehead. "That's my girl," he said, calling for Bruce and Thor who were nearby to come watch._

_-Knocking on James's door after he had locked himself in his room after school. Steve went in anyway after telling the parental authority codes to JARVIS, wiping away his tears and telling him it was okay. "I'll help you practice for the next spelling bee," Steve said, smiling. "And even though you didn't win, you shook the winner's hand. I'm so proud of you for that, son."_

_-Steve walking his fingers up Tony's naked chest, grinning as Tony shivered. Tony's face as he came, beautiful and perfect, and looking up at Steve as he came down from his high with open love and adoration that always reminded Steve of their wedding day. Whether it was fast and rough, or slow and tender, Tony always looked like that after he came and Steve vowed to cherish it anew every time._

_-Tony looked across the carpet at him as he got out of the car. He was wearing Steve's favorite suit, and a tie that Steve already had at least five different strategies for using later tonight. Tony's whole face lit up bright as a star as he threaded through the crowds to get to Steve, taking Steve's arm and whispering into his ear, "Hello, gorgeous. You weren't supposed to be back until tomorrow!"_

_"I came back early," Steve replied, tracing the tie with his fingers and flattening it down. He could never stay out of Tony's orbit for long. "Did you miss me?"_

_"Yes," Tony said, tilting his head just slightly to kiss Steve chastely. "What are you going to do about it, soldier?"_

_"Show you how much **I** missed **you** ," Steve said, lightly touching Tony's cheek._

_I missed this_.

"Captain!" That was Susan's voice. Steve pushed most of the memories away for later, feeling whole again. The piece of him that had been missing was returned. He felt both older and more invigorated.

"Steve?" Tony asked, his voice still half-way across the room with a note of uncertainty in his voice, because only Tony would be married for over fifteen years and still be uncertain of his welcome.

"That was _not_ tingly," Steve said, standing up with Susan's help. He patted her hand to let her know he was okay, then strode across the room to a wide-eyed Tony.

"Steve, you-"

Tony's lips were soft, not chapped like he remembered them, but the rest was all very familiar ground. He pushed Tony until he was against the wall, never relinquishing his claim on Tony's mouth. He was glad Tony had put in the code to make him tangible before giving Steve memories, because he wasn't waiting any longer for this.

Steve wrapped himself in Tony's smell - How do computers smell? Is it just a memory? - his cologne that he wore to big parties and a hint of staying too long in the work shop that was as tantalizing as Steve remembered it to be. Tony, for his part, knew better than to press his luck when Steve got like this. He melted into Steve's arms, pliant as he only ever was when he thought Steve would feel better in complete control - usually when he knew he was in trouble and needed to apologize.

Steve was perfectly amenable to taking control. He pushed into Tony's mouth, letting Tony suck on his tongue as his hands roamed that which he thought had been lost to him. They were both a little out of breath when Steve broke the kiss. "You," he said, punctuating each word with a kiss along Tony's neck, "Are. In. So. Much. Trouble."

"I can deal with that," Tony said, his voice a little higher than normal as Steve's hands reached his backside. "I can so deal with that. I can... Steve! Oh... Computer sex. Was not a kink before, but I can totally make-"

"Um..." Susan said, a little more loudly than necessary. "Can computer sex wait until I'm out of the room? Because I can't tell if this is more disturbing than walking in on my grandparents or if it's hot."

"Hot," Tony replied, wiggling in Steve's arms as Steve reluctantly pulled away. "Let's face it, anyone would want to tap this."

Steve mock-glared, only just holding back a (mostly) teasing growl. "Not that anyone can," Tony quickly amended. "Only Cap's allowed to do that now. And I expect lots and lots of tapping."

He raised an eyebrow at Tony's antics, but rewarded the answer with a chaste kiss. Then he stepped away, letting an amused Tony move towards Susan.

"Are you two always like this?" she asked with a hint of dismay.

"Regretting waking us up already?" Tony said with a smirk. Then the smile softened, and he ruffled her hair. "Don't worry, kiddo. We'll help you get your friends back."

"Thank you," Susan said, looking down. "I'm not smart enough to-"

"Whoa," Tony said, striding over back to the computer as he glanced back at Steve. "Did she just say she's not smart enough?"

"That seems to be what she said," Steve agreed, a small smile on his face.

"You," Tony said, spinning back to face her. "Have kept up the repairs on a very sophisticated armor by yourself, while under constant fire from the government. You've cobbled together the Skrull and Stark tech to get the holograms working to get the help you need. Plus you've been piloting the suit without JARVIS's help. If you were stupid, you'd be caught or dead months ago. If that's not smart, I don't know what is. Trust me, I'm a genius."

"But..." Susan said, biting her lip. "Kes is much smarter than I am. She could have understood the code to help Captain Rogers."

"A, just because you are not a genius does not mean you aren't smart. Everyone is an idiot compared to me, but that doesn't make _Cap_ stupid." Steve snorted at Tony's words and started to plan ways to reduce Tony to a level of incoherency not even his 'genius' could break through tonight after Susan was asleep. He wasn't entirely sure how sex as a hologram would work, but it couldn't be too difficult as long as they were both corporeal. God, how had he not remembered how good this all was? He wanted to map Tony's body, make sure he wasn't still forgetting anything. Mentally, he sighed, thinking back to James and Peggy with a pang of longing. Not in front of the kids.

"B," Tony continued, "you got things up and running, setting up everything in this place including the Skrull tech you had to steal from their base which was extremely dangerous, so that you could get the help you needed. That's pretty smart, knowing how to get help."

"Smarter than Tony," Steve said, deciding it had been far too long since he'd held Tony, especially when he now had memories of his children to miss. He moved behind his husband, pulling him into a tight hug. He got a look of exasperation, but Tony didn't move away. It was nice, watching Tony deal with Susan. Steve had always known Tony would make a great father, even before they'd gotten married. He wished he could have watched Tony with Peggy when she got older. He'd have been so good with her.

"Haha, Captain Sassy. But see, he agrees. Finally, C, you've done all of this by yourself, and that's a pretty big accomplishment on its own. Maybe you can't read code, but this? This is pretty damn fine engineering. Seriously, this is beautiful. It's down-right sexy how you've reverse engineered a lot of the Skrull tech. This is art."

"Tony," Steve reminded gently as his husband got off track. Susan was blushing faintly, smiling shyly.

"Right. Anyway, no more selling yourself short. You're a Rhodey, which means you can't be lame, understand?" Tony finished.

"Rhodey?" Susan asked, a look of confusion on her face. "And what does lame mean?"

Tony muttered something about updating his slang next time he got online, then pointed at her. "You take on an impossible task to find Starks and don't give up. That makes you a Rhodey," Tony said simply. Steve kissed his temple, knowing how much the original Rhodey had meant to him.

"Is this a good thing?" Susan asked.

"Nothing better," Tony said as he grinned at her. "That settled, let's get down to finding the twins. That is if Cuddle-Cap Octopus will let me go."

"Mm. I think you can do a lot right here," he replied. Steve traced Tony's hand, pausing over the gold band that rested on his fingers.

Steve realized with a start that he wasn't wearing a matching ring.

"Steve?" Tony asked as Steve tightened his grip. "Hey, Sugar Patch. Sweet Pea, what's wrong?"

"I don't..." Steve said, feeling lost. He looked down at his empty fingers. "The ring."

Tony's eyes lit up in understanding as Susan looked worried. "Honey, it's okay. Easy fix, I promise. You were just rebooted without those memories. Look." Tony pulled up one of his holographic screens and typed in a few commands. "There. Now just think of whatever clothes you want."

Steve wasn't convinced, but he thought of the ring. The rest he wasn't as concerned about, but he thought of the blue button up Tony used to say matched his eyes. It was only fair, considering Tony had changed out of Steve's favorite suit in favor of the tank top and jeans.

Steve didn't feel anything change, but when he looked down, he was in civilian clothes and the ring was snugly fit on his left hand.

"Better?" Tony asked. "It's not the real one, but-"

"That's okay," Steve said. The real ones were probably buried together, where they belonged. It just hadn't felt right, not having even the image of it. It was so much a part of Tony that he appeared with it on, and for Steve to be without... "Thank you."

"So if you can fix the Captain's code, can you fix JARVIS?" Susan asked. She looked hopeful, and Steve didn't blame her. She needed some good news right now.

At this, Tony looked longingly at the computer, a look of genuine grief flashing though his eyes. "I've glanced at it, but I don't think I could go further without getting infected myself. The virus they made is pretty vicious, and definitely not Stark-made."

"Oh," Susan said, looking near to tears again.

"But you did good shutting him down when you did. We can get him back," Tony said, staring grimly at the screen. "And in the mean time, I can interface with the suit like JARVIS does for you."

"And I'll be here to help you plan your attack," Steve said encouragingly.

She looked at the two of them. Steve still hadn't let go of Tony, who was backed against Steve's chest with a contentment that Steve would have never thought possible if he'd still been without his memories. Steve himself was no longer in the dark place he had woken up to, but somewhere he was needed. He wasn't alone. He still missed his family and friends, but they had all lived good lives, and later he could sit down with Tony and look through the information on the family they had started. He still had someone, and that someone was one of the most important people in his life. And maybe the others weren't as lost to him as he thought, with Tony's memory recording device.

"We'll find them?" Susan asked, hope in her voice that she was scared to acknowledge.

"We'll find them," Steve replied, hugging Tony tighter with the promise. "And we'll clear your name too." He couldn't really fight as a hologram anymore, but being a guardian didn't sound so bad.

"Well," Tony said, grinning madly as he pulled up five more screens. "Time to get to work. Cap, you're up. Go train Rhodey."

"Train?" Susan asked.

"To help you fight better, so you can get your friends back safely," Steve said, reluctantly letting go. This was a fight worth fighting, and he wasn't in a habit of backing down from fights. He closed his eyes and thought of the shield, delighted when it appeared on his arms. "Think you can go a few rounds with an old man?"

When Susan smiled again, Steve knew this was one fight they were going to win.

~FIN~

**Author's Note:**

> Mem: Okay, so the full disclosure for those who need it: All of the Avengers have been dead for over 500 years and you get some brief details in the story about how they died. Bruce is the one who commits suicide. Steve is a hologram made from the recorded memories of Steven G. Rogers. If you're wondering about the suicide thing, at one point he asks them to turn him off and not turn him back on again. But he does find Holo-Tony at the end, and there's a potential that the other Avengers could also be brought back eventually. JARVIS is also taken out for the count at the ending, but Tony says he's fixable and he won't give up on getting JARVIS back as soon as possible. Yeah, I think that about sums everything up.
> 
> Anyway, that is the fic. There's probably more to the story, but the Steve/Tony part wraps up nicely and that's what matters. I might be talked into writing more, but only if people actually want it, since the rest of it focuses a lot on the OCs. It will probably take more than the five people who actually read this to convince me. XD If I don't write more, Steve knows it will work out. Therefore it will. Also, Susan will be BAMF. Because the writer says so. XD
> 
> Here's the [original prompt](http://cap-ironman.dreamwidth.org/131501.html?thread=441773#cmt441773) for those who were wondering:  
> " _One day, Steve wakes up to hear he'd jumped another 70 or so years into the future. To 'make sure he didn't suffer any permanent damage', the people overseeing his awakening quiz him about his old teammates, what they did, how they did it... how their armor and equipment worked. Soon enough, Steve overhears a strange (suspicious) conversation, and figures out that these people aren't who they claim to be, are in fact pumping him for information about his friends, particularly the Iron Man armor... Hopefully he hasn't actually been whisked away into the future again, when he was just starting to find his way in the present._
> 
>  _Happy reunions at the end would be much appreciated, thank you._ "
> 
> So I kind of messed with the happy reunions and twisted the plot a little to suit my own needs. It's not my fault I read that prompt then thought of Babylon 5's episode "Deconstruction of Falling Stars" and decided to hell with it. Holograms for everyone! Also, I added a heck of a lot of random references to B5 just for kicks, everything down to Susan and Michael's names to the medical equipment. Also, I'm aware there's a character named "Rhodey" the 616 comics who is Tony's granddaughter, but I haven't read them and my Susan is therefore probably a completely different character. 
> 
> But basically, that's the fic. I hope you enjoyed it! If you're interested, you can find me on tumblr [here](http://memorydragon.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Quote of the chapter:
> 
> "Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have someone to divide it with."  
> -Mark Twain


End file.
